Facility Emergency Management DVD-based training
Facility Emergency Management is a brand new DVD-based Training Program PLUS a resource CD-ROM intended to help small and medium size organizations create facility action plans and institute emergency procedures in order to protect workers, customers, visitors and the nearby community from the effects of an incident, whether it begins inside or outside the facility. More...

Emergency Management Exercises: From Response to Recovery Special
Exercises are a mainstay in the field of emergency management and business continuity planning. Although many companies conduct exercises, and the organizers may be emergency response subject matter experts, they do not excel in the discipline of designing and conducting the actual exercise – which means they simply don’t get the best results out of their effort. More...

Many of us have had to deal with mentally unstable people at different times and at different levels of the corporate world, including those at executive levels tasked with making significant decisions for their organizations.

A distance-learning MSc in health incident command at ­Manchester Metropolitan University (UK) is the first degree-level course specifically for those in the health services who will necessarily during their career find themselves in ultimate charge of decisions that affect how many people live and how many die

Though there is basic training for all emergency services staff in how to deal with the initial stages of a disaster on the ground, the subsequent hours of decision-making in the strategic and tactical management of catastrophes that erupt, by definition, out of nowhere, can make an enormous difference to the scale of the tragedy that ensues.

The course has been designed so academic rigor is informed by students’ personal experience. “We’re looking to tease out the reasoning behind people’s decision-making, both in preparing for a major incident and when one hits,” says Dave Whitmore, tutor on this new program.

Decisions made at the scene can greatly affect the scale of a tragedy. Photograph: Jaime Turner /Rex

What’s the future career path for today’s Business Continuity Management professional? Singapore’s Nathaniel Forbes has plodded along a BCM career path for 14 years, and doesn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. All he sees is more tunnel.

One of the interesting aspects of business continuity management is that it is a key component of two major professional accreditations: CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor) and CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional).

The effects of the September 11 attacks still reverberate through both public- and private-sector organizations. As a result, they have been more willing to spend more on emergency management. (In some cases, they have been forced to.) The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects employment to grow by 2,800, or 22 percent, between 2008 and 2018.

Ninety percent of risk management experts surveyed have implemented or plan to implement an enterprise-wide risk management approach, according to a new survey from the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and its partners. As corporations work to gain a foothold following the global financial crisis, businesses are taking a closer look at risk management implementation and the role of the Chief Risk Officer (CRO), as noted in the survey. Other top factors in the decision to implement ERM are ratings agencies and risk events affecting the firm.

The BCI London Forum, the largest chapter within the Business Continuity Institute, has announced the results of its ‘What Makes a Good Business Continuity Manager’ survey. Between October and November, 2009, 80 BCI members completed the London Forum’s online survey of 46 questions, anonymously.